Commentary
You've Got Tweets: Social Media Supplanting Email
- by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 9, 2011
Email usage rates are declining sharply among teens and young adults as email is increasingly supplanted by text messaging, including social media messaging, according to comScore's Digital Year in Review. The data suggests this is part of a broader downward trend cutting across most ages.
Overall Internet-based email usage declined 8% from 2009-2010, according to comScore; the decrease is especially noteworthy considering that the total U.S. Internet population grew 4.4% from 211.7 million to 221.0 million over the same period, according to figures released by eMarketer last year. There were even steeper drops among specific cohorts, with email use plummeting 59% among 12-17-year-olds and 18% among 25-34-year-olds. A smaller (but still substantial) drop was also seen among 45-54-year-olds, where email use dropped 12%. The only increase came among 54-64-year-olds, where email usage rose 22%, reflecting growing Internet adoption by this age group.
Meanwhile, about nine out of ten Internet users visited a social network at least once a month in 2010. Women led the way, according to the same report, spending an average 17% of their online time on social networks each month, versus 12% for men. Facebook alone generated 10% of all Internet page views in 2010, and received a visit during 30% of all online sessions.
With email use declining, and online social networks booming, it's only reasonable to assume that social networks (and overlapping channels including mobile text messaging) are substituting for email to some degree. The real question is whether email is simply stuck in a long-term secular decline, which will see it dwindle indefinitely, or whether usage rates will stabilize at some point based on, say, life-stage patterns or professional context.
While social networks can handle all kinds of communication, including casual and business-related, email could hold on to its turf in business-related and official contexts where social networks are judged unsuitable for whatever reason. It's worth noting that regular "snail" mail still carries a large number of official, business-related information, despite the advent of a succession of alternate channels like the telegraph, telephone, the fax machine, and email -- and messages received through the mail still carry a certain weight which messages delivered over those other channels simply don't (at least to me).
Proceeding from this analogy, it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that email could retain its usefulness as a marketing channel -- because a message delivered to the individual's email inbox continues to carry greater import than one received at their social network profile. Or maybe not: maybe social network messaging will become so ubiquitous that it functions as both a formal and informal medium, suitable for delivering all kinds of messages from all kinds of senders -- say, your mom, your boss, your girlfriend and the IRS.
Erik Sass is editor of Publishers Daily. You can reach Erik at eriksass@gmail.com.
When it works, social media messages are great. Primarily believe because they are SPAM-free....so far. But I'm sure that will change.
Of course, can't use them for business. So, email will remain the workhorse for economic production.
This article makes the false assumption that "web-based email" (i.e., email accessed directly online via gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc) trends are indicative of overall email trends. They aren't.
Take a look at the more in depth report on the topic released by comScore in January and you will see that while web-based email usage is way down, mobile-based email usage is way up. http://bit.ly/hX5RFE
Note that desktop based email usage is not addressed anywhere in this report. Much of the decline in web-mail usage is simply due to the fact fewer and fewer people are accessing their email directly through portals. In addition to mobile access, it is now easier to setup Mac Mail, Outlook, etc. to pull down email from the ISPs. Users are now prompted to input their email address and password for web-based email providers the first time they open their desktop email clients. If they choose to access email this way regularly (and many do), then their email activity can't be tracked accurately by comScore (or Nielsen). As such, they don't talk about email overall, they only talk specifically about "web-based email" and "mobile email."
EOD, email is definitely morphing and changing, but interpreting the comScore data to mean "email use is declining" is inaccurate.
Dont forget to add into the mix the business "social" networks like linkedin. More and more I've found people within my network reaching out to me via linkedin messaging before sending me an actual business related email. I've also tried to engage my "connections" via business email and have found it to be unresponsive overall.
If linkedin is any barometer re: spam, suffice it to say, even the most corporate-centric social media sits quickly bows to the insouciant provocateurs of self-promoting messages. btw..great blog post re social media supplanting email at http://www.marcomm201.blogspot.com/ of course its great..this insouciant poster posted it :)
Our 20 year old intern at Anova Group recently wrote a blog highlighting why Twitter and Facebook are superior to e-mail for the latest generation. See http://www.anovamarketinggroup.com/marketing/e-mail-losing-twitter/
But I get my Facebook and LinkedIn messages by email on my cell phone (I never log in to the web interface of any email provider). Twitter messages arrive as email as well...but I'm going to cancel that because it's mostly spam - all DMs are considered spam - and it's only marginally of interest to have an email record of someone following you on Twitter who may have later unfollowed you). It is true that some really young people don't use email and just use Facebook.